). I recently paid $1200 to have a perfectly rectangular 100' x 27.75' vacant lot on a residential city street surveyed, so I can easily imagine the cost of surveying a remote, mountainous, overgrown, difficult-to-access, irregularly shaped 168-acre parcel running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Even if the 168 acres were perfectly rectangular, the perimeter of the borders would be over two miles, compared to my 255.5 ft.[less than 0.05 mi.] perimeter.)I do agree that there's probably a lot of information that been left out of this story, and the multimillion dollar settlement with Calpine in which the Cervieres family presumably shared introduces even more complexity. As for the "American Rule"--apparently the family is trying to recover their costs on the grounds of some sort fraud or misrepresentation on the part of Audubon, which I imagine would change that rule?
Even so, I continue to admire and financially support the Audubon Society, regardless of whether it turns out that they're in the wrong in this particular case.